c. 1996 Religion News Service

SAN FRANCISCO (RNS)-After Episcopal Bishop William Swing of California was invited to lead last year’s interfaith service on the 50th anniversary of the United Nations, he suffered a sleepless night musing about how little religions have done for world peace.”Their role is that every 50 years they come in and have a little hour-long service commemorating the nations’ courage to do something about the earth,”Swing said.”I woke up the next morning and decided I’ve got something I’ve got to do.” The realization prompted Swing to conceive a new international, interfaith organization-tentatively dubbed”United Religions”-that would help root out war by promoting dialogue among the religions.

United Religions would assemble the world’s faiths much in the way the United Nations assembles the nations of the world, said Swing and his supporters. Religious leaders would discuss major issues of the day, press peacemaking initiatives with governments and private agencies, and dispatch teams of religious diplomats to ease tensions in politically troubled areas.

Swing’s ambition is to sponsor a charter-writing conference this summer in San Francisco-where he envisions United Religions would be headquartered-to pave the way for inaugural ceremonies in the year 2000.

United Religions-which Swing publicly unveiled during last June’s U.N. service-would take its place alongside other major international, interfaith groups that have struggled with mixed success to forge religious unity.

But an aide to Swing said United Religions offers what the others haven’t: an ongoing interreligious institution for political action and worship.”At present there does not exist a place in the world where the world’s religions come together on a daily basis and pray together and carry on discussions to determine how they might act together for the good of life on this planet,”said the Rev. Charles Gibbs, an Episcopal minister helping Swing.

Swing departs this week on a tour through the Middle East, India and Europe in hopes of recruiting a who’s who of religious leaders as United Religions charter members-including the pope, the Dalai Lama, Islamic leaders, and leading rabbis in Israel.

Swing will bring before them a lofty vision that faces formidable obstacles.

He acknowledged he has little experience in international ecumenical work. He said other ecumenical leaders have offered him a dash of their consulting wisdom-but lukewarm moral encouragement and zero financial support.

And while Swing has received praise for the idea from representatives of the Dalai Lama and the Roman Catholic hierarchy in the United States, none has yet formally endorsed his idea.”The first aim (of Swing’s tour) is to really have a chance to sit down with these leaders and explain the initiative to create a United Religions,”said Gibbs,”and to invite their participation in the continued development of that vision.” (BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)

According to a proposal Swing has circulated, United Religions would establish a permanent deliberative body of leading religions with the broad aim”to eliminate violence in the name of religion, race or ethnicity.” Member religions would be organized into an assembly, an executive council and a secretariat-much like the U.N. General Assembly, the Security Council and the office of the Secretary-General.

United Religions would provide conference space for seminars and diplomatic programs, worship space for year-round religious services, and a”Value Bank”to help people invest in corporations or non-profits that further their spiritual values.

United Religions would also have”peacemaker teams”of conflict resolution specialists who could drop into geopolitical trouble spots and help broker peace through religious channels.

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Several leading ecumenical officials agree that Swing’s proposal is well-intentioned, even visionary. But they say many questions remain.”I’m sure that he’ll get the support of world leaders,”said Catholic Sister Joan Kirby, director of the Temple of Understanding, an interfaith ecumenical organization based in New York.”The challenge will be fundraising, it will be finding a site: Is he going to do it in California or New York?” William Vendley, secretary general of the World Conference on Religion and Peace, an interfaith group also based in new York, was skeptical of the idea of a San Francisco site, suggesting the city is not strategically enough located to deal with global crises.

Vendley also said Swing must work through a thicket of details on how the religions would be represented. Some religions have complex structures of authority, he said, making them difficult to mobilize, both for public pronouncements and for concrete actions on interfaith initiatives. An effective ecumenical organization requires the participation of religious leaders who truly represent the governing bodies of their faiths.”You could get a fabulously wonderful group of individuals together,”Vendley said.”But I think it would still be a very fair question to say: `Whom do they represent? What’s their mandate?’ Even if they do say something together, are they representing their own community? If so, in what way?” (BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)

The difficulties of interfaith cooperation were never more clearly illustrated than at Chicago’s Parliament of the World’s Religions in 1993.

Feeling Christianity was not given a central enough role in the parliament, evangelicals largely stayed away from the proceedings. At one raucous session, delegates from India shouted down two speakers-a Kashmiri and a Sikh-who had criticized the Indian government’s treatment of religious and ethnic minorities.

And some Greek Orthodox groups pulled out of the Parliament to protest the participation of”certain quasi-religious groups”that”possess no belief in God or a Supreme Being.”The Orthodox pullout was probably a response to the visible presence of pagan and Wiccan delegates, who staged a Full Moon ritual in Grant Park.

But competition from other interfaith organizations may also complicate the birth of a United Religions.

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In June 1993, Swing sought counsel in New York from a handful of other major ecumenical leaders, including Vendley. Swing said he received encouragement but that he also felt as though he were stepping into the ring with rivals.”It was very clear that they all had their turf issues and their money issues,”Swing said of the meeting.”They were standing there staring at each other. I was the new boy on the block. And I said, `Look, I don’t want to compete with you guys. What I want is to do something that is above and beyond what you guys are talking about.'” It remains to be seen whether Swing can persuade the religious leaders he plans to meet on his tour that United Religions indeed offers something above and beyond existing ecumenical institutions.”We are already by far the largest world multi-religious organization,”said Vendley of the World Conference on Religion and Peace.”Many of the people that Bishop Swing would go to see are involved in WCRP. Those people will want to see the uniqueness of what should be gained by an initiative in San Francisco-in addition to or complementary to what WCRP is trying to do. That’s not clear yet.” While Swing’s proposal offers”a grand vision,”Vendley said,”a lot of careful thought is still required as to how to operationalize that or to decide on its practicality.”

MJP END AQUINO